Society Has No Use Whatsoever For One Person In Ten

avatar

This video is worth a listen. Jordan Peterson talks about how the US military does not induct anyone with an IQ of 83 or less, which means the bottom 10%. This is the case despite the fact that the military really wants to hire anyone it has use for. It is not easy to get people to enlist even during peacetime.

He further states that since it is reasonable to conclude that the US military is as complex as the rest of society (it employs about two million people) and hence it stands to reason to conclude that the rest of society has very little use for the bottom 10%, either.

These figures are valid for today's society. The situation is getting progressively worse with increasing automation and AI growing in sophistication.

Cryptocurrency to the rescue?

The problem is someone or something will have to give it value. Network effect? What good is the network effect of people who have nothing to give from a financial point of view?

The cryptocurrency space has so far been entirely supported by exceptionally dovish monetary policies. Bitcoin is a macro asset whose value is derived from its scarcity backed up by a massive decentralized global computer network not controlled by a single entity. It's a savings technology used by individuals and corporations to conserve wealth in the face of accelerating money printing. Apart from providing liquidity to liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges, DeFi is all about pointless yield farming at this stage. The rest of the space is valuable because it oscillates more or less in sync with Bitcoin, which gives it speculative value. There is not much more value to it. If the Hive ecosystem were a business venture controlled by a single company, it would've gone bankrupt years ago owing to its inefficiency.

Let's say structural unemployment reaches 80% by 2045. This is not an unrealistic assumption given the exponential development of technology. While I agree that a decentralized social network like Hive can well function as distribution mechanism, the value being distributed will have to come from somewhere. That is, the tokens being distributed will, by some mechanism, have to entitle their holders to exchange them for the fruits of an extremely advanced productive economy. The key question is what that mechanism would be. Why would the owners of the full automated economy give anything to the masses who play no part in making that production possible or hold no ownership rights to them? I don't see any other alternatives than charity or taxation. Territorial monopolies of violence will have to force the ultra-wealthy elite to give up some of the production to the masses or they will have to do that voluntarily.

To rely on charity to keep the needs of 80% of humanity met sounds extremely foolish to me. One cursory look at history proves how vicious we can be when we perceive ourselves to be superior to another group of humans.

Conclusion

In my personal opinion, it would be best to construct some sort of a decentralized mechanism that does not rely on politics to redistribute the value generated by extremely advanced technologies. It would have to rely on force at some point, which means the government as a monopoly of violence cannot be allowed to go away. Only control over it will have to be much more decentralized that it currently is.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



0
0
0.000
2 comments
avatar

I haven't watched that specific video, but I am familiar with Jordan Peterson's take on IQ and how the wealth gap will continue to widen as the smart people create productivity-enhancing tools and in so doing capture the lion's share of society's advancements in productivity, leaving the low-IQ folks to stagnate and eventually rise up in revolt and use physical violence to seize the property of the smart upper class.

However, I believe Jordan makes the same mistake as Elon Musk when it comes to AI, technology, and automation.

They both believe those three things will replace most humans. What they fail to realize is that humans are uniquely capable in two important areas: creativity and judgment. These are two things that AI and machines will never be able to do.

Machines are good at doing the mundane, repetitive things -- those things that tend to bring the least amount of satisfaction to the working individual.

Although one might argue that judgment and IQ are linked, one cannot argue that creativity and IQ are linked. And, in that regard, technological advances are making it easier and easier for creative individuals to get paid for their creative talents. NFTs are the latest advancement in that area (and a huge one).

With all that said, I am actually a supporter of implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the U.S., provided it is implemented in a way that ensures it will replace all existing welfare payments (personal and corporate) for now and forevermore.

I will actually be teaching about UBI in my class tomorrow. Maybe I will put my UBI suggestions into a Hive post in the near future.


Posted via proofofbrain.io

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Thank you for your response.

I haven't watched that specific video, but I am familiar with Jordan Peterson's take on IQ and how the wealth gap will continue to widen as the smart people create productivity-enhancing tools and in so doing capture the lion's share of society's advancements in productivity, leaving the low-IQ folks to stagnate and eventually rise up in revolt and use physical violence to seize the property of the smart upper class.

Jordan Peterson does not say anything about a revolt in this video. I think the arena in which such a scenario would play out long before any kind of physical revolt would be politics. We have already seen populist movements across the entire West.

However, I believe Jordan makes the same mistake as Elon Musk when it comes to AI, technology, and automation.

They both believe those three things will replace most humans. What they fail to realize is that humans are uniquely capable in two important areas: creativity and judgment. These are two things that AI and machines will never be able to do.

Machines are good at doing the mundane, repetitive things -- those things that tend to bring the least amount of satisfaction to the working individual.

It would be accurate to say that the cutting edge AI we have today is narrow AI, which means that all existing AIs are specific to relatively narrow domains. But within those domains many AIs that exist can be remarkably creative and exhibit very good judgment. Take the best chess or go playing AI's, for example. Human professionals learn from how these programs play. They are developing approaches that human top professionals haven't thought of before.

Although one might argue that judgment and IQ are linked, one cannot argue that creativity and IQ are linked. And, in that regard, technological advances are making it easier and easier for creative individuals to get paid for their creative talents. NFTs are the latest advancement in that area (and a huge one).

Creativity can exist at all levels of human (or machine) intelligence. Creativity is basically a generative activity that results in something new through the combination of existing elements in a new way. AI software can very well be creative within the bounds its expertise. (The same applies to humans: we can only be meaningfully creative within the bounds of our own expertise.) Genetic algorithms, for example, can create novel solutions in many problem domains be it computer hardware design or any other specific problem domain. Even some types of art can be and have been created by software.

With all that said, I am actually a supporter of implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the U.S., provided it is implemented in a way that ensures it will replace all existing welfare payments (personal and corporate) for now and forevermore.

UBI makes a lot of sense. The problem with it is that it is a one size fits all solution that may not work in all cases. For example, things like disability disability allowances may not be possible to replace entirely with UBI without making UBI excessively high.

I will actually be teaching about UBI in my class tomorrow. Maybe I will put my UBI suggestions into a Hive post in the near future.

That would be great! You are a valuable asset to this platform thanks to your role in academia. Decentralized protocols like Hive are potential rich topic for academic research for economists.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

0
0
0.000